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Two children, two men and a woman have been killed in a major crash on the M6, while a third child remains in hospital with serious injuries.
Emergency services were called to the scene of the fatal collision between a Skoda and a Toyota near Tebay Services at 4.04pm on Tuesday evening.
The driver of the Skoda, a man from Cambridgeshire, was pronounced dead at the scene, while another man, the driver of the Toyota, was also pronounced dead.
Three passengers inside the Toyota, a woman and two children from Glasgow, were also declared dead at the scene, while the third child was rushed to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
The families of those involved have been informed and are being supported.
The M6 Northbound remained closed overnight but reopened during the early hours of the morning.
Local resident, Chris Isles, said he was around “50 yards” away from the accident on Tuesday and saw black smoke and flames.
The 58-year-old from Kirkoswald near Penrith in Cumbria told the PA news agency: “From where I was, 50 yards further back, it just seemed like a vehicle fire.
“I was parked up and I could see the smoke. It hadn’t really happened that long. I literally must have been two minutes behind it happening.
“I got out of my (campervan) and just looked down the line and between the lines of vehicles in front of me, I could see there was quite a big fire that started.
“This was at 10 past four. Less than 20 minutes later the air ambulance was there.”
Mr Isles, who captured a photo of smoke billowing into the sky, was driving home and was expected to take only seven minutes to drive from junction 38 to 39, but said he was stuck in “standstill” traffic for around three and a half hours.
“I was up near the front. They seemed to have turned everybody back from the back of the queue forward,” said Mr Isles, who is a publican.
“So where we were, we were probably some of the last people to get off. It was about half past seven when we eventually got moved.”
He said he feels “really shocked” at the incident and is “thinking of the family of everybody”.
“It’s terrible. It never crossed my mind that there would have been five people killed. It’s awful,” he said.
Photographs on social media showed a plume of black smoke rising into the sky above the motorway at the site of the crash.
Anyone with information relating to this incident can report online quoting incident number 146 of 15 October 2024.
